Generally, data is always recorded in a document recorded on paper (described a paper document hereinafter) so that people can visually and easily understand it. Accordingly, a paper document itself has a role as a recording medium for recording data thereon and also has a role as a displaying means for displaying data, whereby excellent characteristics are provided in ease in reading, convenience in portability, ease in handling, applicable circumstances, and continuity with actual work.
On the other hand, in recent years, electronization of documents has been promoted by improving the computer-related technology and man-machine interface as well as by upgrading the network environment, whereby distribution of a paperless system has been accelerated in offices.
Concretely, various types of documents are prepared (electronized) on a screen of a personal computer work station, and the electronized document can be edited, copied, transferred, shared in common, filed, proofread, and searched or the like in the computer (in a digital world or virtual reality). Especially with development of the network, an electronized document can be distributed (transferred) to a personal address as is without outputting it by a printer or the like, so that the paperless system in an office is achieving further progress.
Also, electronized documents can automatically and systematically be managed with a document data administrating system constructed in a computer, so that there are such advantages such as that classifying documents to be stored and searching documents to be referred to can easily be carried out, and furthermore that a total volume of documents can be reduced due to increasing of documents held in common, security of confidential documents due to use of a pass word or the like can be improved, and data between documents can be related to each other.
However, although there are many advantages in an electronized document, in a case where it is compared to a document outputted onto an actual sheet of paper (described as a paper document hereinafter), there are various types of restrictions relating to ease in reading, convenience in portability, ease in handling, applicable circumstances, and continuity with actual work or the like. Thus in a case where the electronized document is used in actual work, it is sometimes more efficient to use the document as a paper document after it is outputted onto a sheet of record paper by a printer or the like once. Accordingly, a paper document and an electronized document each used according to an object of work will coexist in an office environment in the future.
However, with the conventional technology described above, there have been some problems as described below because there are no continuity and no relation of data as digital data between the digital world such as a computer or the like and the paper document.
Firstly, even in a case where a document electronized is put under control by the document data administrating system constructed in the digital world, when the electronized document is outputted as a paper document, related data which the electronized document has, for instance, address data in the document data administrating system, security data such as a pass word, linking data with other documents or the like are eliminated, so that a paper document has no value except one as only an output from the document data administrating system.
Secondarily, it is impossible to directly access digital world by using a paper document as a medium, so that a user is required to access the digital world by operating a keyboard or the like, which is convenient.
It should be noted that there is a method of directly accessing the digital world with paper like a mark sheet as a medium in conventional technology, but mark sheets which are previously formed in one particular pattern are used, so that there are various types of restriction therein, and for this reason mark sheets can not be used as an ordinary type of document.
Thirdly, a hyper text document exists in the digital world as an advanced concept of an electronized document, but in a case where this hyper text document is outputted as a paper document, only a plane data (visualized two-dimensional data) is outputted, so that data which the original hyper text has is lost, which causes a loss in data and reduction of the convenience.
More specifically, a hyper text is a collection of linked (related) texts (electronized documents), and a basic concept of multi-media software allowing reference to each text hierarchically and multi-dimensionally related to each other in an arbitrary order through the linked construction. Accordingly, this hyper text includes data for forming the linked construction (namely, data as a hyper text) other than data visually provided to a user. However, when a hyper text document is once outputted as a paper document, the data as hyper text is eliminated, so that the outputted paper document does not have features of a hyper text document.
It should be noted that, in conventional technology, hyper text documents can exist only as electronized documents, so that the concept of a hyper text itself was used only in the digital world (virtual document) in which electronized documents were handled. Accordingly, there has not existed such a concept that a paper document can be handled as a hyper text document and the hyper text is realized by using the paper document in the real world (this concept is defined as a paper hyper text, and described as paper hyper text hereinafter).
With a paper document based on conventional technology, it is assumed that data is always recorded so that people can easily and visually understand it, and for this reason, a quantity of data recordable on a sheet of paper document is physically restricted according to the size of a visible character and the size of a sheet of paper, and also the number of pages (the number of sheets of paper) is increased in proportion to quantity of increased data in an entire document, whereby much more space is required for storing paper documents.
With the paper document based on conventional technology, the data recorded on paper was used as final output data which people could easily and visually understand, which means that the data was not generally used for any other purposes.
On the other hand, in the digital world, a hyper text document exists as an advanced concept of an electronized document. More specifically, the hyper text is a collection of linked (related) texts (electronized documents), and a basic concept of multimedia software in which texts hierarchically and multi-dimensionally related to each other can be referred in a given order through a linked construction. Accordingly, data for forming a linked construction (namely, data as a hyper text) is included in this hyper text document other than the data visually provided to users.
However, in conventional technology, the hyper text document exists as an electronized document, so that the concept of the hyper text itself was used only in the digital world (virtual document) in which electronized documents were handled. Accordingly, there has not existed until now such a concept as that a paper document can be handled as a hyper text document and the hyper text is realized by using the paper document in the real world (this concept is defined as a paper hyper text, and described as paper hyper text hereinafter).